


Mija

by Dog_Bearing_Gifts



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Death, Idea not mine, Inspired By Tumblr, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 04:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14128212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dog_Bearing_Gifts/pseuds/Dog_Bearing_Gifts
Summary: “It doesn’t happen to everyone,” the officer said, “but it’s not uncommon. When people reach the end, their minds go back over their lives, over people they’ve known. It happened to mi hermano—his first wife died years before he did, and she started glowing a few days before he arrived.”“Which means?” Imelda asked, and the officer’s first answer was a smile.“It means your daughter has been thinking about you a great deal, Señor Rivera.”Héctor escorts his daughter to the Land of the Dead.





	Mija

**Author's Note:**

> First off, please note that the idea behind this fic is not my own. That honor belongs to popcornpages88 on Tumblr, who came up with this lovely headcanon. I simply used it with their permission and got approval for the changes I made. You can read the original post here:  
> https://popcornpages88.tumblr.com/post/171363101098/so-i-was-thinking-about-the-phenomenon-where 
> 
> Additionally, huge thanks to uncuentofriki on Tumblr for her beta reading.

“Your daughter will arrive soon.”

A full two days had passed since Héctor received the news from a smiling officer, and he hadn’t stopped glowing.

The glowing began prior to the news. He’d seen it first as a reflection in Tia Dorotea’s face, wide eyes and a vanished smile, one that was soon picked up by others in his forgotten family, prefixing a command to _look, look_ _down_. Then he’d seen it, a pale golden light radiating from his hands, his legs, his chest—every part of him that he could see. One panicked run home and an equally panicked visit to the Department of Family Reunions later, he’d stood beside Imelda as the whole family received the news: Coco was dying, and Héctor was to escort her to the Land of the Dead.

“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” the officer said, “but it’s not uncommon. When people reach the end, their minds go back over their lives, over people they’ve known. It happened to mi hermano—his first wife died years before he did, and she started glowing a few days before he arrived.”

“Which means?” Imelda asked, and the officer’s first answer was a smile.

“It means your daughter has been thinking about you a great deal, Señor Rivera.”

If Imelda or Julio or any of the other family Coco had known longer envied him, they didn’t show it. “We’ll have time to prepare,” Imelda said the moment they stepped out of the station.

“She loves horchata,” Julio said. “We’ll need it for the fiesta—we’re having one, aren’t we?”

Imelda’s look, amused though it was, had still made Julio duck beneath his hat.

Two days and a whirlwind of conversations and suggestions and trips to this shop or that later, Hector stood in the patio, surveying the decorations Imelda had insisted upon putting up as soon as she got them. There was no telling when Coco would arrive, and she would not have her daughter walk into a half-decorated home. Not when she had the option of preparing in advance.

“You’ll play for her, won’t you?”

Rosita’s question made him look at her, a little more sharply than he’d intended. “I…”

“After you bring her home? I mean, we’ll have recordings, but I’m sure she’d love hearing you play even more.”

“If—if she wants me to.”

Rosita laughed. “Why wouldn’t she want her papá to sing for her?”

Héctor could think of several excellent reasons, but before he could share them, she gasped, took him by the shoulders, and steered him toward the house. “Dios mio! The recordings! We still need to pick them!”

By the next afternoon, nothing was perfect, but it was as close to it as Imelda would admit. He stood beside her on the patio, listening to one of the recordings they’d chosen. “I think she’ll like this,” Héctor said.

“She’ll be happier when you play for her.”

He took only a moment to think of a polite deflection, but it was still a moment too long. Imelda put a hand on his shoulder. For a long minute, she said nothing.

“She was never angry with you, Héctor.” The softness in her voice made him look at her, but she continued to stare at the waiting decorations. “I was, but Coco? Never. When I…I said some unkind things about you, but she never once joined in.”

“She barely knew me, Imelda.”

“She still loved you. Even when I wanted her to hate you, she loved you.”

Hèctor followed Imelda’s gaze toward the decorations again. None of them quite met her standards, but then, perfection was elusive. To his eye, this fiesta would be the best he’d ever seen. Only one thing, one person, could mar it.

“They said she’s thinking about me,” he whispered. “They didn’t say _what_ she’s been thinking.”

Imelda cupped his face, and he saw that all the softness in her voice, all the gentleness and regret he’d heard, had found a home in her eyes. She didn’t say a word, and yet she said everything he needed to hear. Everything he couldn’t quite believe.

The song ended and the next one began, a gentle waltz he remembered from the early days. He took her hand in his; she put her hand on his back and he returned the gesture. Neither spoke, neither suggested it, and yet the dance began as naturally as the sunrise. Step after step, turning and spinning as they made their way across the patio. The next song was faster, and they kept pace, the steps coming as easily as if they had danced them every day for a hundred years. Imelda spun out of his arms, and he prepared to catch her as she spun back.

A breeze ruffled his hair, his clothes. Héctor had only enough time to see Imelda stop mid-spin, hand flying to her mouth, before cempasùchil swirled around him, and everything was gone.

When next he blinked, he was in darkness. He could hear voices both near and distant, the shuffle of feet across the floor, the faint and hesitant strains of a violin. A narrow bar of light near the floor slanted onto his shoes; more light formed the faint outline of a door. He reached for it, hoping to find a doorknob, and froze.

 _“You’ll get your old body back,”_ the officer had said. _“That is how she’ll remember you.”_ Hearing it was one thing; seeing bone covered in flesh and skin once more was another. He turned his hand over and flexed it before feeling his face. Cheeks, nose, ears—all there. Lips—interesting having those again. Every inch of him, from head to heels, had been restored.

Héctor laughed. He might not be alive again, but it felt that way.

The door opened. Héctor found himself facing a woman he didn’t recognize, but before he could prepare an explanation as to why there was a strange man in her closet, she reached through his chest and grabbed a broom.

_“Will anyone else see him?”_

_“Oh, no. Only Coco. Her memories will bring him there, and he’ll exist only in those memories. No one else will see, hear, or touch him.”_

Hector wrapped his arms around his middle, taking a few breaths to steady himself. Maybe he should have taken notes.

Once he’d recovered some, he looked up at the door. They’d always been solid things to him, both here and in the Land of the Dead, but if a broom passed right through him, there might not be another way out. He held his breath, closed his eyes—and took the biggest step he could.

He opened his eyes to a hallway, filled with the golden light of late afternoon. The broom had been propped up against a wall near a half-open door, but a flash of movement caught his eye. Miguel walked past; Hèctor opened his mouth to call out a greeting before remembering the obvious, and simply watched from behind as his grandson wiped his nose on his sleeve.

The woman from before emerged from the room, a sad smile on her face that faded when she saw Miguel. “Use a tissue, mijo!”

“Sorry, Abuelita!”

Héctor smiled, watching as Miguel rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. If only he could be heard, he would’ve said something about the music that still floated past. He would have liked to know who was learning to play.

Abuelita—her name was Elena, he’d been told—lifted the broom. Her sad smile returned, but the smile faded soon, leaving only sorrow for Héctor to glimpse as she went off in the opposite direction Miguel had gone.

Coco was in that room. She was in that room and she was waiting.

For _him._

For the first time, Héctor was able to get a good look at himself. He wore the same blush mariachi suit he’d worn the night of his death—the same one he’d worn the day he left. After all these years, Coco still remembered it.

He paused at the door. What could he say? After a lifetime of absence, he couldn’t simply walk through the door and greet her. Yet he couldn’t walk away. Not now, not ever again.

“Papá?”

The door. It hadn’t been closed. Not completely. She’d seen him and it was too late to go back, so he stepped through.

And there she was, white hair pulled into two braids, the bottom half of her huipil hidden beneath a blanket. Her head was propped up on a stack of pillows, and her smile….Dios mio, her smile.

“Papá,” she said again. “You’re home.”

For a long minute, Héctor couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat, or see her through his tears. He was home, and he was with his girl. His beautiful little girl who had waited for him to walk through that door.

“I’m home, mija.”

She tried to sit up, and he hurried to her side. He took her hand, holding it gently as she gave a light squeeze. She used to do that when she was small, when her tiny fingers barely wrapped around one of his. The thought sent his tears tumbling down.

“What’s wrong, Papá?”

“I’ve missed you, Coco.” He stroked her hair, running a finger down one of her braids. “I—I should have come home sooner, I tried, but I…”

Coco cupped his cheek, tears bright against her skin. “But you’re _here._ You’re home.”

He’d been away her entire life, or most of it. She’d grown from a child to a woman to a grandmother twice over, and he’d spent that time on futile attempts to see her just once. He’d missed the whole song and only returned for the final few notes, and she didn’t care. He could see it in her eyes, written all over her smile. He’d been away, but he was home now, and that was all she needed.

And it wasn’t the end, not really. She would sing another song elsewhere, with the rest of the family. “Your Mamá misses you too,” he said. “And Julio, and Victoria, and Rosita—“

“Tio Oscar? Tio Felipe?”

He smiled. “Wait until you see what they’ve planned for your fiesta.”

“There’s a fiesta? For me?”

“We’ve missed you, mija.” He wiped a tear from her cheek. “Of course we’re going to celebrate.”

She smiled, then looked past him, out a window he couldn’t quite see. Laughter and voices, Miguel’s among them, floated through. Her grandchildren and his played outside, not knowing that their Mamá Coco was about to leave.

He had always known she was grown up. Before each attempt at crossing the bridge, he’d reminded himself that she wouldn’t be the child he’d left, that she would be a woman, perhaps a wife, a mother, a grandmother. Yet now, at the look of bittersweet sorrow on her face, he _understood._ She was a mother and a grandmother about to leave her children. She’d see them again on Dìa de Muertos, but there would still be pain and she didn’t want to hurt her children.

Victoria had loved her Mamá. Rosita had adored her sister-in-law. Julio’s eyes gained a faraway cast whenever his wife was mentioned, and he never spoke of her without a smile. Imelda had joined the three of them in praising her as a wonderful mother who had lived a long and good life, but now that Héctor saw it in that single look, in the sorrow on Elena’s face, he felt he might burst.

“I’m so proud of you, mija.”

Coco’s eyes filled with tears again.

“I mean it. I….” He couldn’t even put it into words. He had missed her whole life, and yet he knew she’d lived it well. If only he could have seen it.

“Oh Papá. I have so much to tell you.”

He took her hand, pressed it between both of his. “Promise you’ll tell me everything?”

She nodded, weakly at first but then more vigorously as her strength returned—as she neared the end. She broke out in a laugh, which blended with her tears. “I’ve missed you so much, Papá!”

Héctor couldn’t stand it any longer. He stood, pulling her to her feet, and swept her into a hug, laughing and crying as he spun her in a circle. Cempasùchil swirled around them, ruffling their hair and their clothes until it faded away and they were left clinging to one another. Hector held her another minute before kissing the top of her head.

“Welcome home, mija.”


End file.
